Thanks for writing this. I've noticed that it's tempting (and all too easy) to construct just-so stories explaining any behaviour in terms of whatever status we are already assuming the actor holds (one illustration of this: Eliezer's list of hypotheses for why high-status people seem stupider, versus thomblake's response listing some equally reasonable-sounding hypotheses for why high-status people seem smarter). And if we see someone behaving in a way that contradicts our perception of their status and some popular signaling hypothesis, we can call it countersignaling and have that feel like an explanation even though we failed to anticipate it. Hopefully, formalizing what we mean by "status" will be a good step toward making status/signaling hypotheses testable and falsifiable.